This year, the ChangeNOW summit welcomed a special delegation of the Covenant of Mayors - Europe. Amongst the represented cities, two of them distinguished themselves by committing to the 2030 targets.

14 Covenant cities from 9 different countries positively responded to the call for interest launched by the Covenant of Mayors Office. 22 persons, including 8 local elected representatives, formed the delegation that took part in the summit held last week in Paris.

The delegation had a special programme. In the morning they attended a session on sustainable mobility (with a presentation from Deputy Mayor of AmsterdamMarieke van Doorninck, who pledged for streets where bikes are the norm and “cars are the guests”, and on a session on resilient cities with a presentation fromVice Mayor of Porto Filipe Araujo.

The Covenant city representatives enjoyed a private lunch during when they exchanged about their climate and energy solutions.

In the afternoon, they had a guided tour of the "Hall of solutions", participated in one-to-one meetings with innovators, and attended a pitching session where the best innovations were presented, such as:

- GreenGame, a tech which automatically tracks people’s activities that impact the environment, and offers challenges or games that enable cities, brands and any other organisation to engage and reward people for living sustainably, through gamified challenges.

- Urban Canopee, which creates vegetated canopees that can be installed on roofs, buildings or public space with an autonomous watering system to help cities combat heat islands.

-Rada buildings, a civil engineering startup that creates new generation of bridges that would make cities pedestrian-friendly, and buildings that can generate their own energy.

During the official evening ceremony, Deputy Mayor of Amsterdam Marieke van Doorninck and Vice Mayor of Ramnicu Valcea Eusebiu Veteleanu got on stage to sign respectively the adhesion form to the Covenant 2030 targets (Amsterdam) and a symbolic engagement to present the 2030 commitments to the next municipal council meeting (Ramnicu Valcea).